


under the skin.

by bangabriel



Category: VIXX
Genre: Gen, Needles, Pain
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-01
Updated: 2014-03-01
Packaged: 2018-01-14 05:52:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1255312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bangabriel/pseuds/bangabriel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wonshik never considered that his stage persona Ravi and his image during Voodoo Doll would cause him regret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	under the skin.

Most days his restraints are gentle on his body and hell on his mind.  When the drugs race through his veins and immobilise his limbs, Wonshik loses his ability to cope with pain as well as he used to.  Muscles cannot tense, fingers cannot curl into fists.  When he's trapped like this, a prisoner in his own body as the woman rattles at his ribcage with pinpricks and agonizing vibrations, he's found that all he can do is scream.  
  
In their time together, she has learned to gag him, and he has learned to appreciate the leather straps that hold his arms still when they are her chosen focus instead.  They, at least, allow him more freedom than her poison does.  
  
Wonshik doesn't know how long he's been in this place.  There is no sunlight, no cast of stars to help him time the passing of days.  There are only white walls, and a white bed, and a white chair that would not be out of place in a dentist's examination room.  The only colour in the room comes from him, and from the photos of him that have been plastered on the walls.  The carefully cropped collage is a showcase of the woman's obsession, and the reason she brought him here.  The photos are the reason he is the subject of her unusual torture.  
  
Her feverish work vibrates his ribs in his chest as she presses down too hard, and the boy lets out a muffled, pained howl.  Teeth clench around the handkerchief stuffed into his mouth; it's the most reaction his paralysed body can manage, and she looks at him with sympathetic eyes as she drags a cloth gently over the affected spot.  
  
"I'm sorry Ravi. I know it hurts. But it will be worth it," she promises.  She always promises.  Wonshik doesn't find any comfort in those words.  
  
She touches his cheek, brushing her slender fingers along it as his eyes run hot with tears.  The warmth lasts only a moment, and then she returns to her work.  
  
How long has he been here, really?  How long has she kept him, how long has she been using her needles to sew her colours into his skin?  The questions circle Wonshik's mind in both his quietest moments, and his most chaotic.  
  
His arms are settled on the arm rests, leather straps carelessly open around his wrists. It's not like they're necessary today anyway.  Wonshik tries to will himself to move; his eyes fall on his right hand, on that blackness that fills the space between the bones, and an indecipherable swear gets lost in the ball of fabric impeding his tongue.  This was the first thing she did to him.  The joints and bones along the back of his hands and fingers had hurt the most, and he had begged her to stop.  There is a clear and noticeable unevenness in some places, and Wonshik finds a grim satisfaction in there being evidence of his struggle.  
  
The bones and the dark spaces between them reach halfway up his forearm before the ragged edges of his skin hide them from view.  She isn't done with his right arm yet, not even nearly; her plans are mapped out on the collage, a specific visual of her every plan to destroy Wonshik.  She has all the time in the world, and thus she leaps from place to place on his body, choosing sometimes on a whim and sometimes as punishment for his wrongdoings.  
  
The first time he told her that his name is not Ravi, she ripped open his chest the same way she did his arm.  She'd spent an entire day scraping out all the things inside of him that hid behind his ribcage, filling him up with agony and leaving only the heart behind.  The next day she'd sewn blue and red into the exposed heart, and Wonshik swore in his drugged state that he could see the thing beating.  She'd coated the shredded skin left behind with bruises and discoloration, and when she was finally through she'd pressed her lips against his ear and whispered words he'd never forget into it.  
  
"Don't worry, Ravi," she'd said. "Wonshik can't hold you back much longer. I'll help you escape."  
  
Since then, she's filled his skin with things he's come to hate.  Her designs are familiar, and they've graced his skin before, but permanence was not something he'd had to worry about at the time.  There's a winged cross on his upper arm, and flames both black and white that lick along his shoulder.  Tribal designs. Skulls. A thick chain curls around his left forearm.  Black designs spread up his neck from his collarbones and reach behind his ears where he cannot see.  He can't see many of the things done to him - his back has not been spared from her treatments, and though he doesn't know what it currently looks like, he's felt every single inch of her work.  
  
When she finishes adding touches to the intricate black curls that now grace his side, she shifts her attention lower.  His exposed stomach has been waiting, clean and fresh and mostly untouched, and she picks up the outline of the star and skull she plans to place below the work she's just completed.  Once pressed against his skin it leaves a purple pattern behind, giving her a stencil to trace over so everything looks as it should.  She pushes the waist of his jeans lower; his sharp breath doesn't go unnoticed, and she smiles as she leans down to kiss a protruding hip.  
  
Her tenderness feels to Wonshik like the deepest violation of all, because it only ever comes straddled by pain.  The buzzing begins again, a constant sound in her presence that makes him feel as if he's losing his mind, and he clenches his teeth to brace himself for the light stinging he knows is coming.  It's not so bad anymore.  Not in most places, at least, which makes him wonder even more how long it's been.  Human beings don't grow accustomed to pain quickly, do they? Wonshik doesn't think so.  
  
Some days she works quicker than others, or at least that's what Wonshik believes.  He's been thoroughly disoriented from the understanding of minutes and hours and days, trapped in this endless cycle of being broken down and being asleep.  On days when he can move, sometimes he wanders the small space, but most days now he either can't or doesn't want to.  He doesn't see the point anymore.  She drags his limp body to the bed pressed into the corner when she's done with him, tucks the sheets around him and kisses his forehead, and that is where he stays until she comes back again.  
  
There are smudges on the sheets.  Most of the random splashes are black, but some are red and blue, and Wonshik knows every mark came from him.  The ink that has seeped into his skin seeps back out after she leaves, sticks his body to the sheets as it dries between them.  The weird mixture of plasma and invasive colour bubbles above his skin, leaving every design raised as if it's been drawn on top rather than into him.  Sometimes he hopes that when it's wiped away, everything beneath it will be gone, that all the colour will have drawn itself out knowing it isn't wanted. But that has yet to happen, and Wonshik doesn't have the ability to hold out for hopeless dreams anymore.  
  
"Be Ravi," she whispers as she traces the letters of his group's name across the backs of his fingers.  
  
"Be Ravi," she whispers as she adds spiderwebs gathered around his elbow.  
  
"Be Ravi," she whispers as she presses a stencil onto his cheek, outlining the mark that will curl under and around his eye.  
  
"Be Ravi," she whispers.  
  
"Be Ravi."  
  
The day finally comes when she whispers this to him and he responds.  
  
"I already am."


End file.
